The first day of every cruise there's always a mandatory drill for everyone on board, passengers and crew. For this drill I do the life jacket demonstration, which I found to be a fitting job since I come from a family of flight attendants. This drill was the most fun any of these drills have been because this crowd is much different than our normal crowd...they're young, energetic, and outspoken. I got a roaring applause during my demonstration whenever I would somehow manage to do an extremely difficult task like place the life vest around my neck, or click the strap together. That was nothing compared to the reaction when the intercoms announced that there was a whistle attached. They all started asking me to explain how to use a whistle and laughing, one of them yelled out "BLOW IT!!!"
We really started the cruise off the first night with a drag show that ended up being one of the funnest shows I've done on the ship. The singer dressed as a bunch of different divas through out the show and sang songs that made seance with them....but they were more adult versions. The entire show was more adult and very funny. It was great for us because all of the regular shows have to be PG, so it was nice to have a break from that. One of the songs he sang was I Will Always Love the Crack Pipe, it was actually I Will Always Love You and I think he left the lyrics the same. Of course he was dressed as Whitney Huston for it. When he started singing he sounded terrible and started coughing and cut off the band. He made a gesture for us to take it down a step, so we took it down a step and started again. Again he sounded terrible and coughed and cut us off, made the same gesture and we took it down another step. This time when he started singing he sounded a little better...not much, but a little better and kept singing for a while. At the end of the verse he started coughing again and cut us off. At that point he too a crack pipe out of his pocket and took a hit out of it (obviously it was a prop, and it wasn't a real hit). Right after that he gave a cue for me to hit the drums and bring the band in on the chorus which was really big and he sounded great! The rest of the song he sang to the crack pipe "and I will always love you..." Etc. He had to take another hit to get the last note. It was hilarious. The rest of the songs all had something funny about them, and we finished with I Dreamed A Dream from Les Mis and him dressed as Susan Boyle.
I had the next day off, which was a sea day, so I took it easy, worked on some music and stuff like that. The next day we were in La Rochelle, France which was a small town that people from cruises use as a gateway to Bordeaux. I met up with some friends and we went into La Rochelle. We started the day with GeoCashing. GeoCashing is pretty much a worldwide scavenger hunt. Basically, someone hides something in a container, then goes to GeoCashe.com and logs the coordinates for the "cashe" (whatever it is that they hid). Then someone (us that day) puts the coordinates in a GPS and try's to find the item. Inside the container is a paper that whoever finds it signs to say that they've been there. It's really fun and you can find these things all over the world. I found the first one that day hidden quite well in a branch of a tree. It was a smurfs sticker. We found a couple of these which took us around the town, then spent the rest of our day walking around the town. It wasn't anything too special, but it was a cute town.
The next day we were in Bilbao, Spain. A couple friends and I went to the world famous Guggenheim museum. We found a GeoCashe right outside of it. It was a very cool museum and had a lot of modern art that I really liked. That was also the first time I've ever seen a Picasso in person. We didn't get around the town at all, but it was Sunday, so not much was open anyways.
The next day we were in La Coruña, Spain, but we were in rehearsal all day pretty much. I won't say more about that other than it was a very easy show.... We did get enough of a break for me and a couple of the guys from the band to go out for tapas. One of the guys lived in Spain for a bit, so we let him do the talking and ordering. It was delicious food and the town looked like it was nice, to bad I didn't get to see more of it. There was nothing really special about the show that night. Just a female singer.
The day after that we were in Lisbon, Portugal for an overnight. We had rehearsal in the morning for the production show that the cast does with us "iHollywood." It didn't take very long and we didn't arrive in Lisbon until 3:30. I went straight off the ship when we arrived. Some friends and I walked around the city. It was pretty amazing. There were a lot of narrow old cobblestone roads, statues and old buildings, and it was very hot. We walked up a huge hill that and got to an amazing view of the city. There was a castle that looked pretty cool on the other side. We started off in that direction, but I had to break off from them before we got there to go back to the ship. I had the show to play, plus the orchestra was on In Port Manning (IPM) duty that night. IPM means that we have to be on the ship from 8pm to 8am. International law says that a certain percent of crew from each department must be on board in case of any emergency that may happen. We were pretty disappointed about this because it meant we couldn't see Lisbon by night. But someone had to do it. I got back to the ship and played iHollywood. In the middle of the show my click track stopped, which is a red flag because the show goes along with a prerecorded track with strings etc. and the click track keeps us in sync with that. We kept playing and I looked up. My bandmaster looked confused, then I looked at the stage, all of the stage lights were out and the emergency lights in the audience were on, the two members of the cast who were on stage took and bow and walked off, then my bandmaster cut us off. Without missing a beat the cruise director was onstage with a working microphone and announced that there was a ship wide black out at the moment and the emergency generators were lighting the theater. He and the cruise director from Atlantis vamped for about 20 minutes before the power came back on and we could continue the show. One of their tactics was to bring the cast out to introduce them each individually, then they went down the line and had the audience applaud if they thought they were gay. It was a little strange but the audience loved it. We started the show where we left off and didn't have anymore issues.
The next morning we were still in Lisbon, but I couldn't get off at all because I was literally in rehearsal all day long. One rehearsal was for the headliner Deborah Cox, which was the next days show. That one was only a few hours which we got 2 songs done in.... Again, not hard songs. We had a lunch break and were able to go to the crew BBQ which was on the helipad on the bow of the ship. Right after that it was back into rehearsal for 3 hours. Not hard music again....
The next day the ship was in Cadiz, Spain. I had rehearsal all day again for Deborah Cox, so I didn't even see a view of Cadiz. Her show was fun to play though because it was a completely packed house for both shows. The sound of the applause was deafening. They were very into her music, which was pretty much all club music.
The next day we were at sea for most of the day, but arrived in Ibiza, Spain at 10pm for an overnight. This was basically a party island. They're known for their clubs which don't really get going until about 3:30am. They are also very expensive to get into, so we didn't go to one. We did go out to get some very good food and hit some bars though. It was a fun night, and really nice to be off the ship at night. The weird thing about bar hoping there to me was walking from bar to bar over drawbridges and castle walls etc. It's funny to me that modern life just goes around those things here. We got back to the ship just in time for the 5:45am curfew. The next day we took a cab to the beach. It was packed full of people, and every few minutes groups of girls all dressed in matching crazy gold swimsuits would walk by singing and holding signs advertising some club in Ibiza. We swam a bit, the water wasn't clear and was actually pretty dirty with seaweed floating around. We stayed there as long as we could before we took a cab back to the ship.
The day after that the Atlantis Charter ended in Barcelona. I was able to get off there, but it was Sunday, so not much was open. I walked around the city a little bit and it seemed nice. I'll have to go back there someday when it's not all closed down.
The next cruise was boarding and everything was going back to normal. This one we would be relocating to Istanbul, Turkey where I'm excited to go cymbal shopping!
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